Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday sued the East Plano Islamic Center and its leaders in North Texas for alleged securities fraud after months of fierce scrutiny from GOP officials and commentators over a planned Muslim community.
The East Plano Islamic Center has pitched a residential development, formerly called EPIC City, with more than 1,000 residential units, a mosque, a K-12 faith-based school and retail shops outside of Dallas. The project drew numerous state investigations earlier this year — some for unclear reasons — including one from Paxton, who said in March he was looking into potential violations of consumer protection laws.
On Friday, Paxton accused Community Capital Partners — a private group he alleged EPIC founded — of failing to register as a securities dealer and committing securities fraud by misrepresenting the proposed development’s location and its leader’s compensation in relation to the project, according to the suit.
Paxton filed the suit in Collin County, where part of the development is planned, a month and a half after he wrote to the Texas Securities Board about violations his office had uncovered while investigating the development. He asked the board to review those findings and get back to him so that he could sue.
The development is no longer called EPIC City and is instead called The Meadow. EPIC could not be reached for comment Friday night.
“The leaders behind EPIC City have engaged in a radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets,” Paxton said in a statement, vowing to stop the development. “I will relentlessly bring the full force of the law against anyone who thinks they can ignore the rules and hurt Texans.”
The legal action is the latest development to bring attention to the community, which has been the recipient of Islamaphic vitriol for months.
This summer, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly closed a probe into the housing project — saying that the developers had agreed to follow federal fair housing laws.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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